The Wedding Quilt

Wedding Kaleidoscope, 99" x 99"

The small kaleidoscope "tester" quilt came about when I decided to use the same pattern for a queen-sized wedding quilt for my niece. A box of fabrics had been waiting to become a kadeidoscope, so it made sense to test the pattern on a smaller scale before tackling the large quilt.

 

The small quilt in the previous post has 8" blocks, and the queen-sized quilt has 11" blocks.

Close up of quilting, 11" blocks

The colors were my Niece's request, and about half came from my stash, including the mauve shot cotton, the white swirling background, and the navy. The only real problem with pieceing was my choice of a homespun fabric for the corners in the alternate blocks--it shredded like crazy. If I use a homespun again, it will be fused to an interfacing if loose threads show through other fabrics.


Electric Quilt coloring

Post 100 - Ten Things

Kaleidoscope Tester Wallhanging, 41" x 41"

Ten things I’m liking right now:

1.  The folded fabric drawers in my sewing room, thanks to my son who gifted me hours of “slave labor”, and chose folding fabric over yard work. Still a few drawers full to fold!

2.  Using up accumulated strings in quilts. I’m working on my third quilt with strings grouped by color.

3.  Quilt Ship online community (www.quiltship.com) – just getting started, will use it differently than Ravelry (there is no way I’m going to inventory my fabric!)

4.  Finding new ways to use tools already on hand, especially rulers.

5.  Modern Quilt Guild, I joined the national group for the resources, including Fresh Quilting and webinars online. The webinar Who Gives a Flying FQ About Accuracy? By Krista Hennebury is very good.

6.  Using different techniques to get a better result - i.e. pinning differently to get more accurate seam intersections.

7.  Time off from work. A longer break (month of September) was very nice.

8.  Sharing techniques one on one with quilters. Had a fun day with Jennifer discussing string block options and cutting up her strings and adding some of mine.

9.  Being a resource – when a friend mentioned a “little line of fuzz” after changing her rotary cutter blade, I remembered a tip to check for 2 blades loaded instead of 1, and though she was skeptical, that was the fix.

10.  Color – the brighter the better. I'm enjoying the projects and the results.

 

Finishes

The Strippy Stars quilt is quilted and bound. Lesson learned: if a piece of fabric seems too flimsy, just throw it away rather than using it because it's a good color.

Strippy Stars Twin

One hourglass charity quilt is finished. A friend brought me several backings for charity quilts, and one piece was enough for binding too.  The second top is quilted and just needs binding.


Charity Hourglass Twin

 Two doll-sized quilts are finished, including a hand-finished binding. It was the first quilting attempt on the Juki, and I was very pleased at how they came out, no puckers and just pin-basted.

Doll Quilts

A queen-sized kaleidoscope quilt is in the planning stages, some fabric purchased for it, some coming from stash. This is to be a wedding quilt for my Niece, and she had some specific color choices that were not on hand.

A tester-sized kaleidoscope is in progress, using the fabrics already sitting in a box for this pattern.  Half the blocks were finished at retreat two weeks ago. I'm adjusting the cutting of the pieces to have a bit extra for security in the center seam. I'm glad that I pushed to start this before the wedding quilt. The Eleanor Burns book has good tips for cutting, piecing and pressing, but I was annoyed that it only has one size for all the quilts, while the ruler can be used for multiple sizes.


Kaleidoscope 8" Blocks

WIP Thursday

The Yellow Strippy Stars twin-sized charity quilt is loaded on the machine for quilting. It was interesting to work with a striped fabric in the background, a soft yellow and cream. The star centers are 6" string blocks, and alternating blocks have points made with my sashing stars ruler. The background fabric was so short that the outer borders are narrower and 4" pieced corner blocks were needed.

Yello Strippy Stars flimsy, 60.5" x 85"

Four flannel burp cloths for charity have been strip-pieced, now need to find backing fabric and quilt them.

Two hourglass charity twin-sized quilts are being pieced. The starting point was a kit for a wallhanging (10 FQ/s?) and a few more FQs. As the triangles were being cut out, it became clear that for better contrast some lights were needed. Stash diving yielded quite a mix of fabrics. Adding alternate plain blocks pushed the project to be two quilts, also making block intersections less lumpy.

Finished Sunday - 4 baby bibs, and the new Dritz snap tool worked great. Interfacing on both layers make them secure. The bibs are backed with a lightweight terrycloth, and my usual velcro tabs would have stuck to it in the wrong places. Velco tabs are fussy to stitch, and the next batch of charity bibs should use them up.

Little Baskets - Embrace the Rainbow

If I had to guess, Little Baskets was started 4-5 years ago. 100 block sets were cut with a die cutter from pastels and some white. It was worked on at home and at a retreat, and then the reality of what to do with 100 4.5" blocks left me stymied.

It has been sitting in a box with only a note that 40 blocks were finished. When trying to decide on a pattern for a friend's upcoming grandchild, I took another look at the pieces. All of the basket handles of the 100 blocks were finished. A piece of white polka-dot fabric with multiple colored dots was in the box. After conferring with several friends with grandchildren and/or baby quilt making experience, I decided to set the blocks with an alternate square of the polka-dot fabric, making a larger quilt. A backing fabric from stash was pulled--checkers with almost matching colored squares to the polka-dot fabric (a completely different fabric line.)

Little Baskets, 67.5" x 58" Quilted with Snapdragons

I did end up making several more baskets of red fabrics, as there weren't any but the background dots and backing fabric both had some soft red. Overall I'm happy with the colors, though if I were to make the quilt today it would look much different.

Backing and corner close-up

A rainbow color layout made sense, rather than scrambling all the colors. It's my first rainbow layout, and I can see doing it again, perhaps with more planning next time.

This project also taught me to keep better notes when sewing a fussy design. The little handles are sewn down by machine on one side, and the template was still with the pattern, but to get a nice smooth curve, the bottom end of the bias strip just barely goes over the seam line. It's now on a note with the die cutter.

Fancy Fox

The Fancy Fox pattern by Elizabeth Hartman was gifted to me by a quilter friend. It was fun to look at all the finished quilts online, lots of different color combinations. Originally my thought was to use an ombre green for the background, but that proved too challenging. Another fabric in the stash was found, a leafy print that worked well cut into strips for the blocks. The fox I saw once near home, at a park was a red one, so red-brown prints were pulled.

Fancy Fox, 62.5" x 50"

The blocks are a bit exacting, and honestly a bit dull to piece. Most of the parts were sewn at a quilt retreat, as they were not too complicated and breaks were welcome. Sewing the columns of blocks together took a bit of time, but worth fussing with seams to get them to fit with the vertical sashing pieces already cut to size. It's interesting how some patterns need a scant 1/4" seam, where this one needed a generous 1/4" seam.

Fancy Fox close-up, Groundcover quilting pattern

I took enough care with this all-stash top to justify buying a coordinating backing (on sale, of course). It looked like a burlap-print green online, and when it arrived it looked more like a lawn - with the kind of stripes you see on baseball fields. Fortunately there was enough to match the stripes on the back. It had to work as binding too, as almost every scrap of the background leaf print had been used up.

Catch-up and Clean-up

Gumdrops String quilt - working through my strings. Simple tumblers made using the Fat Cats ruler, working with pinks, yellows and oranges with a black on white background. This cheerful quilt was popular with visitors to my studio, and was donated to charity.


Gumdrops, 54" x 46", quilted with Butterflies

For Mother's Day, my son gifted me with several hours of work. He chose folding fabric over yard work! That helped me get started on the long-overdue process of organizing my stash fabrics. I still need to get to a few more drawers before they are all done. Eventually it would be great to fit all quilting fabric into the drawers, and out of tubs. I have a growing stack of fabric to bring to quilt group and also donated some nice wool yarns to a local charity shop.

I'm slowly working through projects in boxes, and with the help of a new serger, finished three t-shirts and a camp shirt. It's been a learning curve to work with 1/4" seams on garments (both happened to be Kwik Sew patterns.) It's challenging to cut knits accurately with such a small seam, I missed being able to clip into the seam for alignment marks. Chalk has been the replacement, and is so much easier with chalk wheels (Chakoner or Clover.)

The first shirt made was from inexpensive cotton to test the pattern, so I knew that it fit. Two of the t-shirts were from fabric that I'd ordered from Spoonflower a while back. It was great to get a short-sleeved tee from one yard of wide knit fabric. Spoonflower only sells in 1-yard increments, so a long-sleeved tee from their fabric will have some waste and may just cost too much.

A twin-sized charity quilt using the Disappearing 4-Patch is finished, not pictured. It is well made and cozy, made from blue & green reproduction fabrics.

Knitting has slowed for a bit with the heat we're finally getting. I'm still working on charity projects, and also developed a knit stitch for scarves that is mostly garter with occasional slipped stitches. It gives an interesting accordion-like, reversible pattern. I finished a new scarf for myself with this stitch, and got to use it for a couple of weeks before it got too warm.  Another, shorter scarf used up a skein of self-striping yarn. They are pictured on my Ravelry page.

Love All Around

Love All Around Blocks

I came across a tutorial for these blocks at http://www.maychappell.com/2017/01/20/love-all-around-tutorial/ last weekend, and immediately thought of a bundle of floral prints waiting for a project. Those fabrics didn't make the cut, instead this mix of reproductions and modern prints came together. I sized up the block to use my die cutter, and these finish at 12". They'll get sashing, possibly scrappy to make a small wall or cuddle quilt. The tutorial is excellent.

The die cut pieces gave me some challenges, and only after finishing the blocks did it become clear that keeping in mind the direction of the fabric came into play. It's recommended to have the length of grain (warp) going parallel to the length of the die, and since several of these fabrics were directional, that was overlooked.

Two charity quilts are ready for batting, one more ready to quilt. All of them are the scrappy strips from 2.5" pieces.

My collection of fabric strings is being thinned, organized and cut into ~7" lengths. Using them as leader/enders, as well as testing tension on a new-to-me straight stitch machine, 23 blocks were pieced this week. First in line is a lap-sized tumbler quilt, using pink, yellow and orange strings.

Outtakes

Usually the cat tries to get in on every photo shoot. A few days ago it was the puppy, and right now he is sitting behind me at the computer, demanding attention though his treat ball was just loaded with kibbles.



Arne, almost 7 months, American Lab

He is also a big fan of yarn, having chewed the edge off a small wool blanket that lived on the sofa, and investigates any project in progress (knitting basket on the floor instead of out of reach.) Last night he climbed on my lap while I was in my low comfy chair reading, and settled in very quietly.  Time to go outside and make some snowballs with the remnants of snow before it melts.